Greater Surbiton

The fight against genocide in Ukraine and in Gaza is central to the global anti-fascist struggle

There are two high-profile genocides taking place in the world today, in Ukraine and in Gaza. Whether they succeed or fail may determine whether or not the liberal-democratic order in the West and beyond survives.

If Russia’s genocidal aggression in Ukraine triumphs and the Ukrainian state collapses, it will be a crushing victory for the neo-fascist right and its campaign to subvert liberal democracy in Europe. It would likely be followed up by a massive escalation in Russia’s acts of subversion and sabotage through its right-wing populist Trojan horses in EU and NATO states, a Russian attack on one of the Baltic states and the collapse of NATO. Demoralised by defeatism, cowardice and self-hatred, democratic Europe would fold as the French Third Republic folded in 1940; far-right governments and parties would spread westward like mushrooms after the rain.

Europe is, however, just one battlefield in the escalating global struggle between the liberal democratic and authoritarian states and parties. To defeat the Russia-China authoritarian axis, the liberal democratic world must win the battle for global public opinion, by showing the world that our value system is better than theirs. We cannot do this while we continue to collude in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Furthermore, support for Israel’s genocide is a conveyer belt transporting conservatives and centrists into the far-right, Islamophobic camp, helping to corrupt and destroy liberal democracy from within. A victory for Israel’s genocide, involving the total ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the territory in the manner that Trump and Netanyahu are advocating, would finalise the moral collapse of the democratic West and further inspire its subverters within.

The struggle against genocide in both Ukraine and in Gaza is thus central to the global struggle to defend the liberal-democratic world and defeat fascism. This is being fought not just between states, but within them. A vanguard role is being played by the brave protesters in Israel and Iran fighting to overthrow the mirror-image regimes of Netanyahu and Khamenei. The fascists have taken power in the US and are threatening to do the same in Britain, Germany, France and elsewhere, but even if and when they do, the fight does not end; the US has a fascist government but is not yet a fascist state. We can win America back, and we can win back Israel, Palestine, Iran, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia and Georgia. The struggle is not just about the future of Europe or the West, but about whether the world as a whole will evolve in a liberal-democratic or an authoritarian-chauvinist direction.

Victory for the liberal-democratic world would involve the liberation of Ukraine in its pre-2014 borders, including Crimea; the liberation of Palestine involving a two-state solution based on the pre-1967 borders and shared Israeli-Palestinian ownership of Jerusalem, with Hamas excluded from power and dissolved; the downfall of the regimes of Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, Khamenei, Orban and their friends; the defeat of MAGA, AfD, Reform UK, National Rally and other fascist and semi-fascist parties and movements in the West; the trial of Putin, Netanyahu and other war criminals before the International Criminal Court; and the building of a powerful global alliance to defend Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the rest of democratic Asia from the Chinese and North Korean dictatorships.

Difficult ? Apart from China, the enemies of the free world are not very formidable. Trump is an unintelligent, vacillating buffoon whose support in the US is declining. Putin is a small-minded thug whose invasion of Ukraine revealed him to be strategically and tactically incompetent; his Russia is a paper tiger with a second-rate army and third-rate economy that would be smashed flat in a real war with NATO. Netanyahu is a clever politician and war leader, but widely hated by the Israeli people; his fractious government of assorted cranks is never far from collapse. Khamenei’s regime in Iran has been repeatedly militarily defeated and humiliated in Lebanon, Syria and at home, and is ripe for overthrow, with its enslaved women likely to be in the forefront of the coming anti-theocratic revolution. The far-right parties and movements in the West nowhere enjoy overwhelming popular support. All of these are beatable.

The real obstacle to victory for the liberal-democratic world is the lack of resolution of the West’s leaders, which itself is a reflection of the degeneration of liberal democracy. Our political order appears unable to meet its population’s material needs; our elites and middle classes are largely governed by cynicism, careerism and control freakery devoid of higher values; our universities, trade unions, churches and other civil society bodies are hollowed out and corrupted; our mainstream politicians are reduced to triangulating between anti-immigrant and centrist voting constituencies while managing national decline. Such a political order is unlikely to mobilise successfully to win a global struggle against much more ruthless enemies.

The outcome of the struggle will be determined not by the strength of these enemies but by the liberal democratic world’s ability to become better than it has been. In the 1940s, after the shame of the previous decade’s economic failures at home and appeasement of fascism abroad, the liberal democratic world rose to the challenge and successfully rejuvenated itself, militarily, economically and morally. Failure to do the same today will suggest that liberal democracy as a political and economic system has failed, and we should resign ourselves to a much darker authoritarian future. If we want to avoid this, saving Ukraine and Palestine from genocidal destruction is the first test we must pass.

Saturday, 30 August 2025 Posted by Marko Attila Hoare | Arabs, Britain, Caucasus, Central Europe, China, Conservatism, Crimea, Fascism, Former Soviet Union, France, Genocide, Georgia, Germany, Iran, Islamophobia, Israel, Liberalism, Middle East, NATO, Neoconservatism, Palestine, Racism, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Ukraine, United States, World War II | AfD, Ali Khamenei, Alternative für Deutschland, Binyamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, Gaza, Hamas, Hungary, Japan, Jerusalem, MAGA, National Rally, North Korea, Reform UK, Taiwan, Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin | 1 Comment